


Hold On

by SlimReaper



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Minor Character Death, Morally Ambiguous Character, battlefield medicine, iopele, it's not as bad as it sounds, really - Freeform, robot gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 04:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10868940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlimReaper/pseuds/SlimReaper
Summary: Yet another battle, yet another wounded patient, yet another fight to keep them alive... Ratchet has had too many days like this.Unfortunately for him, it's going to get worse before it gets better.





	Hold On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Harutemu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harutemu/gifts).



> This was a drabble prompt from Harutemu that got away from me a little bit (200 words max? ha ha ha yeah right, like I've EVER been able to write short stuff), but I was happy enough with how it turned out to cross-post here. Thanks, Haru!

Seemed like a new bleed squirted for every one he stopped. Ratchet lunged for the extra clamps in his kit, but a blinding flash momentarily knocked his optics into a hard reboot. Only after his visual feed returned–staticky, uneven–did Ratchet realize two things.

One, that the flash had been the explosive dying flare of his patient’s spark, its crystal shattered by a single, pinpoint accurate shot.

And two, that the same shot that ended his patient’s life had torn through his own side when he’d reached for his kit.

He didn’t waste time cursing the loss of yet another patient. Clamps still in hand, he fell back against the huge rock he’d mistakenly thought would shelter them from the battle and jammed his free hand into the gash in his armor, ignoring the pain as bright red damage reports scrolled across his HUD.

Looks like he was still clamping bleeding lines, just on a different patient this time. He wished he could say it was the first time he’d been his own patient.

Wished he could say it would be the last.

But as the pool of energon around him grew and his visual feed started to flicker instead of clearing, Ratchet began to worry that it really might be.

Somewhere over the sound of battle, a roaring high-performance engine raced closer. Ratchet ignored it–didn’t recognize it, couldn’t waste time caring–felt out another torn line, tried to maneuver a clamp around it… his weakening fingers slipped and he lost it, and _now_ he swore viciously, the profanity trembling with fear.

The engine cut out with the sound of transformation. Pounding footsteps closed the remaining distance, though Ratchet’s vision was too staticky now to make out much more than the mech’s vague outline. Didn’t seem to matter that much anyway, not when they shoved him onto his back and hoisted up his legs onto something–maybe his kit?–before yanking the clamps out of his hands.

 _Raise the legs, lower the helm, bring more energon down to the processor…_ yeah, Ratchet should’ve thought of that, but fraggin’ forgive him for not thinking perfectly clearly while he was bleeding out.

“You got people coming?” the mech demanded roughly as fingers delved into his wound, pinching lines and clamping them with an efficiency that had no time for gentleness.

Ratchet’s first attempt to respond emerged as a burst of static, but he finally managed, “Comm’s down… ‘Cons got the relays.”

“Fraggin’ _pit_ ,” the mech snarled, working faster, and this was clearly no medic but Ratchet wasn’t gonna complain, not when his HUD showed that his energon levels were no longer in freefall. “Fraggin’ stupid _moron_ of a medic, out here in the middle of the sludgin’ war, don’t you have a fraggin’ _hospital_ to park your stupid aft in?” he ranted as he worked, and Ratchet couldn’t help a chuckle, even if it did end in a cry as the mech accidentally caught a nerve fiber in the next clamp he placed.

“Wounded’s out here,” Ratchet said, and yeah, he was slurring now, automatic shutdown imminent as pain and energon loss and shock took their toll. “ ‘S where I c’n help most.”

New engines roared closer now, the sound of Sunstreaker and Sideswipe as familiar to him as his own engine, and his rescuer suddenly grabbed his shoulders and spoke very fast. “You weren’t the target, Primusdammit, you just got in the way. Your people are coming– _hold on,_ and stay the _frag_ off the slaggin’frontlines so you don't get in my way again!” 

Ratchet had no chance to reply before he was gone, but moments later the Twins were there, both of them talking at once and he didn’t hear a single word as relief crashed over him.

He’d figure out who that other mech was later. 

**Author's Note:**

> ... yeah, Ratchet, don't worry about who that mech was, he's probably no one important, right? XD


End file.
